Field
This application is related to wireless communications.
Related Art
A wireless (e.g., cellular) communications system may be evaluated based on its average cell throughput and its cell-edge throughput. Improving both the average cell throughput and cell-edge throughput performance may is generally desirable. While the average cell throughput performance may be improved by increasing received signal strength using, for example, power boosting techniques, cell-edge users may nonetheless experience low received signal strength, and the cell-edge throughput performance may be affected by the inter-cell interference (ICI). This may be true for wireless communications systems designed to operate with (and operate using) a frequency reuse factor of one, or close to one. This level of frequency reuse may be a key objective of communications systems employing orthogonal frequency division multiplex (OFDM) based networks, including, for example, fourth generation (4G) and future generation networks.
Notwithstanding such objective, operating using the frequency re-use factor of one, or close to one, implies that the wireless communications systems may become interference limited due to all cells being permitted to transmit (or transmitting) on all time and frequency resources simultaneously. Unfortunately, power boosting may not improve cell-edge throughput performance because signal strengths may be increased for both serving cell and interfering signals. Other techniques for improving cell-edge and other throughput performance, such as, coordinated multi-point (CoMP) transmission and reception, may be desirable.